Chance Per Se
by SeungSeiRan
Summary: When it comes to fate, it all depends on the choices you make... with a little help, naturally. Irvine x Quistis.


**Howdy :). It's my first time writing in the FF8 section so I hope that it goes down well.**

**Disclaimer:**** I don't own Final Fantasy VIII. **

* * *

Ever since she'd been a child, Quistis had wanted to be more than just the blond blue-eyed girl in the picture. Years later, she was afraid that she'd gone ahead and done quite the opposite.

He had Rinoa. She still had an unfulfilled wish weighing heavy on her mind.

Don't all the boys love the blue-eyed girls, they'd commented in envy. She'd frowned and hushed her errant pupils to silence laced with infrequent bouts of twittering. Suffice to say, even she had to admit that she'd thought she'd had him by the heartstrings. Logic hinted to it, the ball seemed set to roll in motion. She had the eye of every young red-blooded male in the Garden on her, he had the respect of every superior in the ranks cast on him.

And to think that there might have been something ahead for them.

However, as the avant garde say, alas... as the wistful comfort her, c'est la vie...

Que sera, sera. Whatever will be will be.

The time for daydreaming had ended and she'd had to step back into reality. He'd changed for the better thanks to his newfound love and she knew that she'd heal with time. A new term had begun with the first changing of the leaves in autumn. A new class, fresh from summer frolicking and fanfare, stared at her with blank bleary eyes caked over with sleep. The usual lectures of duty, responsibility, honor, and hard work were delivered with the crisp tenacity she was acclaimed for and the rest of the day slid by peacefully. Before she knew it, the hour hand on her watch had shifted from eight to four.

After making sure she was alone and safe, she let her guard down.

For the rest of the day, she could believe that she was eighteen again.

"GET BACK HERE!!"

The two male students literally zoomed past her in the blink of eye, involuntarily splashing her face and neck with some help from the makeshift water-guns they were wielding. The blonde was left spluttering for a few seconds before she could regain enough composure to march after them whilst wiping the wet residue off from her glasses. Bringing the trouble-makers to justice would have succeeded in ticking off another item from her agenda but...

"Oof!"

_Alas..._

She glanced up, startled at his sudden presence.

… _c'est la vie._

"I'm so sorry, I didn't see you there."

Irvine tipped his hat slightly askance to get a clearer view of her. "S'alright, Miss..."

Maybe it hadn't been a good idea to pin her name tag so prominently on her chest, she fumed. Sometimes, some leopards never changed their spots...

"Quistis." she filled in for him.

He snapped his fingers in an over-theatrical show of recollection. "That's it! Never really had a gift for remembering names. I'm more of the type that never forgets a face. Especially a beautiful one..."

His left eye closed in a knowingly cheeky wink. She decided to oblige him kindly for the moment.

"I'm flattered. Selphie was in the cafeteria the last time I saw her."

"Ah..." He nodded as he prepared to take his leave. "Well..."

"I suppose I'll see you later."

"Yeah, I guess... see ya."

She watched him stroll down the length of the corridor and breathed a sigh of relief as he vanished round the bend at the end. It was a good thing she'd caught a glimpse of her reflection in the glass window. What a pretty sight she must have made with her hair dripping onto her shoulders and the front of her uniform. Tsk, tsk, and her glasses had remained water-stained as well. Out came the dainty lace handkerchief and in came an old forgotten fleeting sense of satisfaction.

As to what it was at, she wasn't too sure of.

And when she was sure of it, it felt all the more unreliable.

* * *

"_So what brings you here?"_

"_A toss of a coin." he grinned up at her from his bed in the grass. "Heads, I drag myself out here and waste away this beautiful sunset at Balamb. Tails, I stay home at Galbadia and polish that rack of new pistols which just came in today."_

"_Coin tosses? Since when did you start believing in chance and destiny?"_

"_I don't. Never have, never will. But what I do believe in are choices and decisions. And what else does a coin toss involve except for making a decision based on two choices?" _

_On cue, he sat up and yawned before addressing her with a wink and a glance again._

"_Why don't you sit down, Quistis? The ground's great."_

_She chose not to. A skirt without trousers beneath them to protect her modesty was a calling card for a womanizing cowboy._

"_You do realize that you're still tempting fate in that way."_

"_Not if the two choices are based on what I like doing. You wouldn't catch me doing something just because I _had_ to."_

"_Irvine, you can't get away without doing things you don't like forever." she replied, shaking her head for emphasis._

"_Alright then," He returned to rest on the patch of soft green grass. "Maybe only for a decent stretch of time. Ain't that right?"_

"_Depends on how long's 'decent'."_

"_Longer than 'tolerable', shorter than 'forever'."_

_A few stars had already lit up the twilight sky when she gazed up at it for the second time. The sheer vastness of the cosmos in general was indeed a fascinating yet terrifying concept. Judging by all the experiences she'd accumulated in the past, no one could ever be truly alone in the world... even so, she could still try..._

"_Fair enough." she whispered to herself as she left him behind, still gazing on at the incoming darkness._

* * *

As she lay awake beneath her linen sheets remembering today and the day before that, she still wondered if all it had taken was a toss of a dead piece of silver to decide their fate. Every alternate day, he'd arrive, discreetly succeed at ruffling her feathers, then leave with that flirtatious grin of his glued to her mind with a laugh. Hmph, in any case, she was still just another golden-haired blue-eyed girl to him and he was just another one of those blue-eyed boys of the summer gone by. Take the looks, strengths, weaknesses, desires, hopes, fears, likes, dislikes, and what would you get?

Just a girl, just a boy.

The tiny metallic 'ping' sound aroused her attention. Placing the glasses back over her eyes, she reached down and picked up the coin which had rolled off from the open window-ledge. What she examined in the pale glow of the moonlight made her frown.

Outside on the field, a tall figure in a trench-coat and broad-rimmed felt hat smiled at the extent of his own devilish genius. The stars shone clearly and the nearby trees seemed to shake their heads in bemused disbelief at his trickery. As for him, he didn't really mind that he had not only just maintained his consistency as a ne'er-do-well flirt in her perspective but had, using the most unconventional of methods, also altered their own chances at a destiny of their own.

Thank the Heavens for double-headed coins.


End file.
